ceo pay

All the recent talk about Canada's shrinking middle class and rising income inequality got me thinking that it might be a good time to take a fresh look at a somewhat neglected economic concept: the labour share of income. The labour share of income hopes to measure the portion of the economic pie going to workers. The inverse of the labour share is the profit share or, to use some "old-fashioned" language, capital's share.

Last week, the CCPA revealed that the top 100 CEOs in Canada earn, on average, $7.96 million a year -- or 171 times more than the average Canadian worker. That's also 373 times more than an Ontarian earning the minimum wage.

We all know that the wages and compensation individuals receive in private competitive markets reflects their productivity, unless pesky unions and government regulations get in the way -- because Economics 101 (and Michael Hlinka) have told us so.

Corporate CEOs are worth every penny their "independent compensation committees" award in compensation and stock options them because they are "creating value" and hedge fund operators are worth the billions they made helping the world learn about the impact of financial crises. Meanwhile, minimum wage workers, union members and public sector workers must all be overpaid because regulations, unions with their monopsony power, accommodating politicians and labour laws have all interfered with the magic of the market.

Few developments in our era of savage capitalism are so powerfully symbolic of the new feudalism than the obscene compensation paid out to the new economic elite: the CEOs of the most powerful corporations in the country.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative's Hugh MacKenzie now reminds us yearly of this economic and social sickness by identifying exactly when the average CEO (of the 100 largest firms) has earned as much as the average worker makes in a year (this time around it was by 2:30 p.m. on January 3rd.) The total average compensation for Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs was $6,643,895 in 2009.

The economy is terrible. Jobs are nowhere to be found. Wall Street bonuses are through the roof. But mainstream business journalism is still praising the con-men who created this mess, yet attacking anybody who takes real solutions -- like government spending to create jobs -- seriously.

Whatever corporate journalists say, the American economy will not recover until policymakers and the media acknowledge the mistakes of the past and move forward with a new economic agenda focused on middle-class prosperity, rather than financial evisceration by elites.

Now that health care reform has finally been enacted, a host of critical economic issues are taking center stage, including financial reform, unemployment and deeply rooted economic inequality. But it’s important to note that with its health care vote, the U.S. House of Representatives actually approved a very important, and often overlooked financial reform: Student lending.

Pedro de la Torre III of Campus Progress explains the current student loan nightmare in an interview with The American Prospect’s Rebecca Delaney. For years, the U.S. government has paid massive subsidies to some of the worst-run companies in the country.